Developing an evidence-based approach in social services

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22nd European Social Services Conference

How can we develop social policy interventions that support people with less public resources? Which interventions have proven to have a positive impact on people’s lives? What should be the length of time for their measurement?

These were some of the key questions discussed by speakers and delegates at the 22nd European Social Service Conference. There was agreement amongst delegates that the development of social policy towards social investment places strong emphasis on evidence-based decision-making.

Using evidence to achieve better outcomes

Knud Aarup, CEO of the Danish National Board of Social Services in Denmark, underlined that service users have not fully benefited from social care interventions. Even in a country like Denmark, where public spending on social policies is high, service users experienced disadvantages. “The lack of positive outcomes for people is not just costly, but also unfair to all the individuals who experience inefficient interventions from the public sector,” he noted (download presentation). Moreover, limited knowledge on successful social policy interventions, the lack of clear targets and poor leadership on quality single out the need to rethink social policy. The need for a different approach in social policies has become even more pressing with the economic crisis in 2008, with many services being cut in the public sector.

Social services need to do more to improve their capacity for self-evaluation, by using existing data and testing interventions through pilot projects. José Luis Fernandez from the London School of Economics in the UK argued that there are also many opportunities for collaboration between research organisations and social services, including opportunities for sharing data and collaborating on the impact analysis of certain policies or services (download presentation).

“We need to know what we are doing and we need to do the things that work”, explained Knud Aarup. Danish municipalities are currently testing evidence-based methods and the Danish National Board of Social Services is investing in the dissemination of the outcomes and supporting their implementation. There are also evidence-based methods from abroad that are now being translated and implemented into the Danish context. One example is the ‘Open dialogue’ method, developed in Finland and Norway, which sees a person with mental health problems and his or her social network as valuable sources of treatment. This leads to positive outcomes, such as reduced hospitalisation and medication.

Using a range of tools to measure effectiveness

Several workshops at the conference dealt with the importance of data to measure the effectiveness of certain interventions, as well as tools to support the decision-making process. The workshop by the French National Observatory of Children at Risk (GIPED) presented how the centralisation of data with a closer cooperation between local and national level can develop a more holistic understanding of children at risk and tailored services (download presentation). The City of The Hague and the Trimbos Institute in the Netherlands presented findings from a randomised control trial testing the effectiveness of an intervention that consists of long-term, intensive assistance for unemployed parents (download presentation).

The cost of inaction calculator, presented by the Mazovian Social Policy Centre in Poland, is a set of several ICT tools that enable an analysis of the costs and benefits of different measures for specific social problems, such as homelessness, unemployment or addictions (download presentation).

The involvement of service users and their families in the measurement of the impact on people’s life is also essential. The Care Inspectorate in Scotland presented positive outcomes of the involvement of young people in care as team members in the inspection process (download presentation).

Key messages

In many countries there is still a need to integrate an evidence-based approach into the policy development process. The next steps forward are the creation and use of knowledge of what works, with a shift on evidence-based methods, as well as a focus on progression, rehabilitation and inclusion. The European Social Network has recently explored this topic, based on discussions with ESN members, in a recent paper ‘Innovation, research and evidence-based practice’.